Pagan Community Notes: Week of January 9, 2023

TWH – Yvonne Aburrow, author of All Acts of Love and Pleasure: inclusive Wicca,  Dark Mirror: the Inner Work of Witchcraft and The Night Journey: Witchcraft as Transformation, who identifies as Pagan and Wiccan published their updated “Queer Pagan Reading List 2023” on January 1.

Aburrow has been compiling and publishing the list since 2015 which focuses on “the books on Queer Paganism written by Queer Pagans.” The list is extensive and some of the new additions to this year’s list include:

• Mastering Magick: A Course in Spellcasting for the Psychic Witch by Mat Auryn,
• The Pagan Heart of the West by Randy P Conner,
• The Witches of Thistle Grove fiction series by Lana Harper,
• Chaos Monk by Steve Dee, two new books by Casey Giovinco,
• Traversing Gender by Lee Harrington,
• Sacred Gender by Ariana Serpentine.
•  Qabalah for Wiccans: Ceremonial Magic on the Pagan Path and Queen of All Witcheries: A Biography of the Goddess by Jack Chanek,
• Evolutionary Witchcraft, Kissing the Limitless: Deep Magic and the Great Work of Transforming Yourself and the World and Make Magic of Your Life: Passion, Purpose, and the Power of Desire by T. Thorn Coyle,
•  The Satyr’s Kiss: Queer Men, Sex Magic & Modern Witchcraft and The Witch’s Name: Crafting Identities of Magical Power by Storm Faerywolf.

Aburrow writes regularly on her site, “Dowsing for Divinity, Pagan Theology, Poetry, and Praxis” and has contributed articles in the past for publication by TWH.

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TWH – A new graphic novel, Witches of World War II, written by Paul Cornell and illustrated by Valeria Burzo, and published by TKO Studios, is scheduled to be released on March 7, 2023. The novel notes that it was inspired by the actions taken by Gerald Gardner, who was an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Warden during World War II, and the work that his New Forest Coven conducted known as “Operation Cone of Power” to repel an invasion of Britain by Nazi forces.

The story which incorporates the names of very real Witches who took action during WWII, like Dion Fortune, Doreen Valiente, and Gardner, spins a fictional tale that also includes Aleister Crowley, though he did not participate in actions taken by either Gardner or Fortune during the war according to most accounts. In fact, Crowley and Gardner did not meet until near the end of WWII sometime during 1944.

The blurb from the publisher outlining the story:

This magic kills fascists! In the darkest hours of World War 2, Doreen Valiente, a junior intelligence officer, twenty years old and already a war widow, is approached by a British General who tells her he knows she’s a witch… and that’s how she can best serve her country.

Valiente, an expert on British folklore and the occult, is to use her connections in this peculiar community to recruit a group of British ‘magicians’ and use their “skills” to gain some advantage over the Nazi high command, who believe fervently “in all this occult rubbish.”

Together with Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed “Most Evil Man in the World” Valiente recruits a hard-nosed white witch Dion Fortune, the grizzled and gray-bearded founder of Wicca Gerald Gardner, and exorcist and con man in a turban Rollo Ahmed. Together this coven of witches will travel deep into the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe and gamble their lives, their beliefs, and their powers on a mission to help capture Rudolf Hess, fervent occultist, and second in command to Adolf Hitler himself.

For those who enjoy Witch- or magically-themed historical fiction and graphic novels, the new story has the potential to provide a magical journey through the wartime history of Britain during the late 1930s and early 1940s.

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RENO, Nevada – Last week a group of West Coast Native American tribes protested at the federal courthouse where U.S. District Judge Miranda Du heard arguments in the nearly two-year legal battle concerning lithium mining in Thacker Pass which sits near the Nevada-Oregon state lines.

Attorneys for a Nevada rancher, conservation groups, and Native American tribes argued that the damage caused by the mine would result in irreversible damage to the environment. They are seeking approval from the U.S. government for the project to be vacated until all of the additional environmental reports have been completed.

While attorneys representing Lithium Nevada Corporation and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) insisted the project complies with U.S. laws and regulations in their arguments. However, Lithium Nevada and BLM counsel said that if Judge Du determines that the project does not meet and comply with those regulations, then she should stop short of vacating the agency’s approval, and allow initial work at the site to begin while more reviews are conducted.

The land in question is known by Indigenous peoples as Peehee Mu’huh, a Paiute name for Thacker Pass, and is considered sacred by tribes that include the Burns Paiute of Oregon, the Winnemucca Indian Colony, and the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. According to tribal elders, the site is where an ancient massacre occurred, and the U.S. Calvary killed their ancestors in 1865.

Unfortunately, it is also the location of the largest deposit of lithium within the U.S. And with demand high and increasing for electric vehicles (EV), sources of lithium in the U.S. are likely to only increase.

Judge Du has declined twice to grant temporary injunctions filed by tribal members in the past year to halt the mining project. However, a recent appeal to be reheard by the full Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the case of Resolution Copper Mine and Apache Stronghold in March of 2023 could affect future rulings when it comes to tribal lands, environmental concerns, and mining.

At the end of the three-hour court hearing, Judge Du said she would hopefully be able to issue a ruling within “the next couple of months.” 

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Announcements:

• The 5th International Conference on Arts and Humanities Women in religion: from spiritual leadership to female empowerment, organized by the International Centre for Studies of Arts and Humanities (ICSAH) and the Dante Alighieri Society of Nicosia in cooperation with the Università degli Studi di Milano and the Pontificia Università Salesiana has issued a call for papers: “This year, we invite proposals that explore the female share in leadership roles related to religion (saints, prophetesses, priestesses, nuns, preachers, witches, shamans and more), and emphasize how their achievements are reflected in history and art. How prominent female figures have compromised men’s secured positions of power in socio-religious structures? What was their role in shaping gender-responsive societies? We encourage also papers that examine through a gender lens the impact of religion on civic life by analyzing the deeds of women of faith from a political perspective, or deal with cases of political power over religion, in cases of women who achieved to change traditional religious concepts, practices, customs or symbols. We welcome papers that deal with all religious systems from ancient to present times.” The deadline for submissions is March 30th, 2023. The conference will take place on May 8 – 9, 2023 in Milan, Italy.

• Mystic South Conference has issued a “Call For Papers for 2023.” The annual event is held in Atlanta, Georgia, and will take place on July 14-16, 2023. Mystic South is a polytheistic conference and the call is for papers of a polytheistic spiritual nature. Blocks of the allotted time for those submissions that are accepted will be one hour. Presenters receive free access to the entire conference in exchange for their presentation of their paper. Papers may be either written and read or read and audio/visual in format. Those interested can submit a 400 +/- word abstract via the event’s website, deadline for submitting abstracts is February 28, 2023. The event states, “This is a perfect place for those that are not used to presenting academic papers; such as students, junior faculty, or those that are looking for tenure or promotion credits.” Questions pertaining to papers may be emailed to the Papers Coordinator, Gypsey Elaine Teague.

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Upcoming Events:

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• As part of the Cherry Hill Seminary continuing lecture series, “Coming to the Center” will host noted English historian, Professor Ronald Hutton, on Saturday, January 28, at 3:00 pm EDT. Hutton has published over a dozen books and numerous articles, relating to contemporary Paganism, British folklore, and pre-Christian religions, as well as being featured on a variety of British television and radio programs. The event is free but requires pre-registration.

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In other news:

• Cave drawings studied by amateur archaeologist, Ben Bacon, appear to represent a primitive lunar calendar that dates back 20,000 years. While cave paintings include a variety of animal species like fish, reindeer, and types of extinct cattle, often found next to the images are sequences of dots and other marks in a number of sites across Europe, and have even been found on portable items that date to the same time period. Archaeologists have long believed these markings had meaning but no one had deciphered them. Research indicates that cave paintings reflect the sophisticated process of marking cycles that included tracking the reproductive cycles of animals. Prof Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Durham University said, “The results show that ice age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and mark to record information about major ecological events within that calendar.” While the marks are not considered to be “writings” since they reflect numbers rather than words, they do provide a new window into understanding the people who lived so long ago.

• The U.S. repatriated the “Green Coffin” to authorities in Cairo, Egypt after an investigation was conducted that took several years. The sarcophagus was looted from the Abu Sir necropolis in northern Egypt by a multinational network of smugglers who traffic in antiquities and was then smuggled through Germany and into the U.S. in 2008. In 2013, a collector loaned it to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The sarcophagus belonged to a priest called Ankhenmaat and dates back to the Late Dynastic Period, (664 B.C.E. to 332 B.C.E.). The same network of smugglers was also responsible for trafficking the “Gold Coffin,” (repatriated in 2019), the Stele of Pa-di-Sena, from the same Late Dynastic Period (repatriated in 2020), plus five pieces seized from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last year.

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Positively Noteworthy

DANA POINT, Calif. – Passengers on a whale-watching tour boat got to see something exceptional–a gray whale giving birth. At first, it was not clear what had occurred, as a pool of red and orange appeared in the water next to the whale. Some of the observers thought it might be kelp, while others thought perhaps the whale has been attacked by a shark.

Ultimately, they were all wrong as evidenced by the newly born calf surfacing next to the mother.

The American Cetacean Society’s Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project track the migration of gray whales from their feeding grounds near Alaska to the warm water lagoons in Baja California, Mexico. The group tracks the journey of the whales from December through most of May. In total, gray whales travel anywhere from 10,000 to 12,000 miles round-trip each year, as they make their way from the waters surrounding Alaska down the U.S. west coast to Mexico and back again.

Alisa Schulman-Janiger who runs the Los Angeles chapter of the group highlighted how amazing the scene really was in her comments to NPR, “The fact that you can see the blood pool means the calf must have just come out. That isn’t something that is seen very often or documented often. In fact, I don’t know if there’s any other video footage of something like that.”

Schulman-Janiger also said, “It’s extraordinarily rare and really, really special for people to be able to share in those first few moments of a young whale’s life. A whale could get to be 50, 60, 80 years old. And this is just the beginning of that calf life.”

Gray whales average a length of 40 – 50 feet, and weigh anywhere from 30 – 40 tons, in contrast, the whale-watching boat is 25 feet long.

According to Schulman-Janiger, the way the whale cow and the newborn calf nuzzle each other’s faces is due to the skin being more sensitive in those areas and provides a tactile experience and connection that is similar to the way land mammals use scent when interacting with their newborn offspring.

Another factor that makes this encounter with the cow giving birth so important is the recent decline in gray whale numbers. In 2016, it was estimated by NOAA Fisheries that there were close to 27,000 eastern North Pacific gray whales. However, since 2019 there has been a sharp decline in gray whale numbers when the number of dead whales stranded along the west coast was observed. Researchers have cataloged the recent decline, which is continuing, as an Unusual Mortality Event (UME).

The current estimate for the population of gray whales is about 16,500. While the reason for the sharp decline in gray whale numbers is unknown, researchers do know that a similar event occurred in 1999 and 2000. The numbers of gray whales eventually rebounded and according to researchers demonstrates the species’ ability to overcome fluctuations and its long-term resilience.

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Tarot of the week by Star Bustamonte

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